Vladivoj Kotyza: Revealing the World
The exhibition presents the paintings and drawings of the important Pilsen artist Vladivoj Kotyza (* 1943). Kotyza was one of several artists of his generation in the second half of the 1960s who developed a movement in Czech art that followed the stream of imaginative art known as Fantastic Realism. In the development of his work over the following decades, the solitary artist arrived at a distinctive and unusually precise realistic depiction of urban and, later, natural phenomena with a latent metaphysical dimension. The artist’s capacity for a highly sensitive visual reception of phenomena and his meticulous drawing and painting allowed him to present reality in layered levels of revelation. The mechanism of revelation is based on the metaphysical neutralisation of three principles: the subject/object removed from utilitarian operation; time immobilised in the moment of midday; and space seen as an all-encompassing depth.
In recent decades, the artist has developed a different way of representing reality. This is seen in an extensive series of drawings made en plein air, directly in front of the subject, which aim not to represent, but to present a depiction of nature in its living presence. Hundreds of drawings are displayed in continuous strips as the main and predominant part of the exhibition. The visual and semantic centre of gravity of the exhibition is the synthetic, monumental drawing and painting presentation Tree, consisting of five canvases with a total height of over four metres. The tree is presented phenomenologically in a sequence of levels of visual perception from its roots to its crown: this unique realisation, in a sense the culmination of a long-term study of trees and natural phenomena, was created by the artist in direct connection with the forthcoming exhibition.
The aim of the exhibition and accompanying catalogue is, among other things, to place the personality and work of this exceptional Pilsen artist in the national context of contemporary art.
